A cool breeze wafted down from somewhere and brushed against my face, stirring me from the slumber which had me so peacefully embraced.

I groaned and turned onto my side.

"Time to get up already?"

"Wait a second..."

"I squinted, rubbing my scale outlined eyes and blinked heavily.

"Talk about Deja Vu..."

I was back in my shop, nearly in the same exact place in the backroom where I had been the day previously, the same barrels of ale and the same boxes of supplies surrounded me.

"What the hell happened?"

I hurriedly looked down at my hands and legs, disappointed to find them just as scaly as before.

"Still a Lizardman," I said quietly to myself, frowning, noticing that sure enough, the log out button was still gone.

How long had I been in VR? The Time to Real (TTR) ratio was adjusted to allow for longer and more meaningful sessions in-game, but I had already been playing for a few in-game days before my first death. It had to have been hours...

Hopefully my landlord didn't mind rent being a day or two behind... I'd have to explain. Maybe I could email Horizon Online's support system and get some sort of proof that I was stuck in here. I'd also have to let my job know and pray that I still received a paycheck.

Then I suddenly remembered...

The Orihalcum!

Shitshitshitshit. I rushed out into the main room, stumbling on my tail and realizing that it was just as early as the day before and the shop was still closed.

"Subroutines... Being an NPC must mean that I have certain restrictions and respawn locations."

I opened my menu and checked my small experience gains from yesterday.

Experience Type Level Value Max Level 1 0 100 Trading 1 0 100 Mining 1 0 100 Spelunking 1 0 100

I couldn't believe it, my jaw hanging slack in shock. My experience had been reset. Though I hadn't gained much it would be near impossible to raise my mining level far enough to collect the Orihalcum with my stats being reset, and being automatically returned to my shop every day.

I did notice that I had a new skill, Spelunking, even if it would be forever stuck at level 1. Unless the database would be updated if the level actually increased from 1 to 2... I'd have to try it out.

My thoughts were interrupted by a slamming fist upon my door.

"I called in sick for this, are you gonna open up!?"

With a groan and increasing feeling of despair, I walked over to the door, unhooked the latch and opened, letting a boy about my age come in, followed by a hopping blue slime. He had spiky red hair, wore some sort of headband or bandana and carried a great sword upon his back.

"Thanks, I was beginning to think this shop was glitching," he said, walking forward and beginning to scan my wares, his eyes glowing blue from within the menu system. The slime hopped along behind him, leaving small spots of goo in his wake.

"Umm, you have something following you." I pointed out, not really feeling afraid of a low level slime, even though I was only level 1 myself. Perhaps it was my previous power talking. Sure I had spent my early days farming these guys for experience, but now they weren't even worth 1 single point.

"Oh, Blue is my pet. I tamed him a long time ago. Couldn't bare to replace him even though hes mostly useless."

The slime seemed to shrink in embarrassment at that.

"I see," I said, realizing that I was going to have to clean up the mess at some point or another. Or, I supposed, I could let Leandra do it. She did seem like the type eager to please.

"So you said you took work off today? How come?" I asked, as a few more customers came into my shop, looking at the slimy floor curiously before stepping over it and towards my wares.

"Yeah! There's a big event going on. Wait, are you not programmed for it? I could have sworn it said any shop..."

The boy's eyes glazed over again as I was sure he was checking his inbox.

"Should I tell him? At least he's not some asshole like the other people I have dealt with so far, and he doesn't appear to judge me for my race."

I scratched my scaly chin.

"At some point, I'm going to have to find allies..."

Betrayal aside, ruling the Dark Kingdom and all of its inhabitants couldn't have been done alone. Allies were something vital to HellBlade's rule, even if those relationships were mostly based on fear.

I used my newfound NPC powers to investigate this prospective ally.

Name

Agus

Level

46

Class

Guardian

Race

Human

Buffs

None

Debuffs

None

Agus... and a mid-range level Guardian to boot.

A plan was beginning to form.

"Hey Agus," I said, walking closer to him. He had moved aside to look at some armor, apparently satisfied that my store's prices were also receiving the game-wide discount.

"Yeah?" he said, without looking up.

"What level is your mining?"

His eyes returned to focus and he looked up at me.

"Wait, why do you need to know? Can't you just scan me?"

I hadn't thought about that. I scanned him once more, this time noticing beneath my regular NPC information screen some sub-categories, one of which was skills and talents. I selected the skills tab, and scrolled down until I found just what I was looking for.

Skill

Level

Mining

9

Level 9. I wasn't sure if it was strong enough for Orihalcum, which I believe required the max level of 12, but definitely a high enough level to begin my newly planned operation. The only catch would be in revealing this mine to him, he could simply just kill me and hoard all of the riches to himself. He was level 46, which was not something to scoff at. I had to figure out a way to either trust him, or indebt him to me...

There had to be something I could do.

"Anyone in there?" Agus was waving his hand back and forth in front of my face, his slime looking up at my with a scowl.

"Ah yes, my apologies. I simply needed to check your mining level."

Think... think.

"Why?"

"Because..."

That's it!

"I have a quest for you!" I said, a smile forming on my lizard lips. At least I hoped it looked like a smile to him and not some sort of sneer or grimace. I needed to watch myself in a mirror to get a better understanding of what I looked like to others. In my head I was still Hellblade.

"A quest? This is a beginner town, the experience points would be minimal. No thanks."

"An event quest!" I continued, grabbing his shoulder before he could turn and leave. I leaned in to speak more quietly, using him to shield my face from the other customers. "One that nobody else in the entire game has unlocked... Except you."

His eyes lit up at that and I could see the calculating behind them. Would I trust myself? A random NPC suddenly promising such an exclusive adventure? Maybe not, but then again. To Agus, it was a video game and he had nothing to lose.

"Okay, say I'm interested, what's in it for me?"

I smiled at the absurd cliche of my statement, but also at the knowing of its truth.

"Riches beyond your wildest dreams."

Agus laughed and shook his head. "Great writing," he said.

I avoided any show of offense and awaited his response patiently.

"Okay I'll accept, send me the quest contract," he said, reaching down with one hand and wiping some slime off of his leg. Blue's slime face turned pouty.

I smiled again before realizing that I didn't know how to do that. As Hellblade I had always been the quest receiver, not the quest giver. I opened my menu and scanned every detail, trying to find something that I had missed before.

And there it was. In all of its glory. Hidden at the very bottom of my system options.

DEBUG

A debug menu. I couldn't believe it. It must be the backdoor route for developers to access their NPCs and for the NPCs to collect data and information about the world around them. I opened the menu and was hit with an endless list of options that would take hours to go through. With a quick skim, however, I noticed a particular option that caught my eye.

[Menu Config]

I selected it and was prompted with all sorts of different menu options and adjustments to my menu system.

Being a computer programmer in the real world, I was pretty tech savvy and had an eye for things like this. So, fortunately, I wasn't standing there gaping like an idiot for hours on end before I found the NPC menu, added it to my root menu, exited the debug menu with a mental note to study it in depth later, and selected [NPC Commands].

[Quest]-[Trade]-[Threat]-[Store]-[Reward]

Being in a hurry with Agus staring at me impatiently, probably thinking I was glitched again, I selected [Quest] and was greeted with two options;

[Template]-[New]

Selecting New brought up a window where I was able to put in some basic details, experience amount, item rewards, and quest recipient. But most importantly, I noticed, quest restraints. After a few long moments of filling it in with my thoughts, I sent the final product to Agus, satisfied that I had solved our problem.

At least for now.

[Quest : A Secret Worth Mining For]

[Description]

An ancient mine has been discovered, one with unfathomable riches.

Guilds would want their share.

Kingdoms would claim it as their own.

Players would kill for it.

But you have been chosen above all, at the behest of a lowly Lizardman merchant, to become not only the richest player in all of Horizon Online, but to become a founding player in the start of the greatest empire Rotharias has ever seen.

[Rewards]

Experience : 50,000

Gold : 0

Items : Orihalcum x1

[Restrictions]

Repeatable : Once per day

Sharable : Player will lose all rewards if shared

50,000 was the maximum amount of experience I was able to offer. I wasn't sure if it was due to my own level and experience or the location I was stationed in. Apparently gold was tied to my own personal amount, so I had none worth offering him. Fortunately though, and everything had hinged on this, I still had my single Orihalcum flake from the day before and it still counted as an available Orihalcum in my inventory. I was gambling this one fortune in my pocket for the potential fortune of an entire world.

The restrictions were the key factor of this quest, and fortunately my NPC menu provided me with enough options to construct them how I wanted. Firstly, it was repeatable daily. This was important because he would come back each day to get his Orihalcum, even if it meant mining tens or hundreds for me. To him, I was just an NPC and the Orihalcum were just cycling through my pockets and the database.

Second, it was not sharable, with a threat that if attempted to share he would lose all of his rewards. It was the best I could come up with on such short notice and until I found a better way to bind Agus to me, it would have to do.

And as the former ruler of an entire kingdom, I felt that I was good at judging people. I felt that Agus was the one to gamble on. This was the start of something special, I could feel it.

I saw Agus's jaw drop as his shaking finger quickly accepted, knowing full well the real life value of even a single Orihalcum, let alone a repeatable daily quest hidden just for himself. And as he looked me in the eyes, human to lizard, I remembered the last time I had judged someone to be worthy, and the pain that I felt with their knife piercing my spine.